June 2016

December 17, 2005

A short-lived experiment, this. George Clinton put it together during a nine-day crack run. Came to his senses on stage, shrieked, "I see little white men!" Later, Bootsie Collins would comment, "Motherfucker wouldn't shut up about his spice rack. Parsley, sage, rosemary. Cracker forgot cardamon. If you're going to sing about your spice rack, don't be forgetting cardamon. Cardamon's a motherfucking essential."

Our Littlestown pal Ben was unkind enough to send us this unhappy reminder of just how much of a geek we were in high school. You're looking at the staff of the Littonian Echo, the school's administration-toadying newsrag. Ben didn't add the "spotlight of shame" that envelopes us; it was always there, a trick of the light that told the truth. As we told Ben, we appear to be simpering. All we can say in our own defense is that we had yet to discover pot. Pot saved us from a lifetime of dorkdom, just as it has saved countless others. Why pot has never gotten the Nobel Peace Prize, we'll never know.

December 16, 2005

The TypePad people were performing maintenance. Yea, so that's what they're calling smoking crack these days. Anyway, we leave for Germany tomorrow, so we want to be sure to wish each and every one of you a Happy Holiday season, whether you be Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or even Scottish. You notice we didn't mention the Buddhists. There's a reason for that. Those bastards killed our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We would also like to exempt Sting from our Holiday greeting. Sting had nothing to do with the death of that hippie Jesus, but he killed rock. And if they could resuscitate one or the other, we'd take rock, any day of the week. Nay, but seriously brethren, we'll most likely be around briefly tomorrow. But if not, have fun. Love somebody. Love something. Embrace a rock if you have to. We deeply appreciate having all of you around here. You make us happy. This is impossible, yet it's true. So thank you all.

Remember when Art Garfunkel had it all? He was half of the most successful folk-rock duo of all time. He had a burgeoning acting career, a real acting career, unlike his shorter and less curly partner, who blew his Hollywood wad in the prophetically titled One Trick Pony. Then it all went south, and nowadays the only time you see Art is when Paul condescends to yet another reunion concert in Central Park or when Art gets busted, which fortunately for us all happens more frequently than the reunion gigs. But what really happened is this: Art is a team player. He has always hated going it alone. As a result, he spent the Post-S&G years attempting to find somebody, anybody, to replace the little fella who wrote all those great songs. Most of these combinations never made it past the rehearsal stage. Here are just a few of them:

Baader-Meinhof & Garfunkel: "A mistake" says Garfunkel now. "I thought they were the guys who did 'One Toke Over the Line.' I had no idea they were German terrorists seeking to violently overthrow the Federal Republic. Our second practice ended in a shoot-out with the Munich police."

Simon & Garfunkel: "That's pronounced see-moan," says Garfunkel ruefully. "She was an exotic dancer at Mo's Rumpus Room off the Sunset Strip, I was lonely and horny and thought she could sing. In hindsight, my ears were bewitched by pussy. Our practices invariably ended with me drunk on Brandy Alexanders, offering to give her my car for sex. I went through about eight cars. Expensive cars."

The Captain & Garfunkel: "My absolute nadir. Tenille was off somewhere, shacked up with England Dan Whatshisname, and I met the Captain one night at Mo's Rumpus Room. I was lonely and horny and thought he could sing. It... I'm so ashamed."

Hitler & Garfunkel: "Most people would think that forming a pop-folk duo with Adolf Hitler would have to be my absolute nadir. These people have never met the Captain."

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young & Garfunkel: "This one had potential. But Mo Ostin, that shit, thought the name was too long. Personally, I felt it achieved a nice balance between commas and ampersands. We'd have boasted the first twin-ampersand attack in rock. But Mo was against it. He poured poison in Crosby's ear. And I'm not speaking metaphorically. Mo used real poison. Crosby nearly died."

The New York Dolfunkels: "A flat-out mistake. It was Malcolm McLaren's idea. Dolled me up like Adam Ant, he did. I had a swastika carved into my fro. Fortunately, my friends organized an intervention. Simon--that's pronounced see-moan--even showed up. I lost a nice Porsche, but it was worth it."

Weirdo rocker Julian Cope is also a rock historian of some note, and here he provides a wonderfully entertaining rundown on the twisted legend and mythopoetics of Long Island's very own contribution to mock-Nazi-rock and umlaut-worship, Blue Oyster Cult. These nice Jewish boys hung with just about everybody except Thomas Pynchon, but they shared his fascination with Nazi vengeance weapons which they wrote about on "ME 262," wherein they not only namedrop Goering and Hitler but sing the wonderfully evocative line, "It was dark over Westphalia, in April 1945." They sang about Altamont too, except unlike the Grateful Dead they found the Stones-Meet-the Hells-Angels comuppance to the Age of Aquarius a hoot, which is why we'll always love them even if we've yet to fall in love with their actual tunes, which as often as not bog down in the swamps of seventies' prog.

Remember Paul is Dead? That was quite the controversy when we were a young sprog. But it was nothing as compared to the arguments that raged over Pilot's "Magic". The controversy, as was often the case in those days, pitted lyric-sheet literalists against the more radical band of those who believed that singers spent most of their waking hours trying to slip juvenile sexual innuendos into their every song. To wit: Was Pilot's lead singer singing, "Wo ho ho it's magic!", like it said on the lyric sheet? Or was he actually singing "Wo ho ho, it's my dick!" as the conspiracy theorists would have had us believe? The arguments both for and against were Talmudic in their complexity, but we remained an agnostic to the end. Our fence-sitting won us no friends, we can tell you that. Then again, we weren't beaten to death during any of the numerous "Magic"-related playground melees, either.

the "jungle gym" or "monkey bars" as we called them, were the site of many particularly heinous assaults